Cars pass by a sign on Harmony Road in Fort Collins in September warning that the three lanes will narrow to two when crossing the railroad tracks. / Trevor Hughes/Coloradoan library

Written by

Harmony Road west of Timberline Road is expected to be closed five days this summer for the completion of a long-awaited project aimed at replacing a railroad crossing.

The closure will affect both directions of the busy arterial road, said Tim Kemp of the city’s engineering department. Detours will be set up to move traffic around the closure at the Union Pacific Railroad tracks.

Changing the crossing is the final piece of a city project that widened Harmony Road to six travel lanes. Construction and paving for the widening was finished in September, but the city has been waiting on Union Pacific to install new crossing arms long enough to cover the width of the road.

The delay has been frustrating for officials and motorists alike, with traffic bottlenecked at the tracks as the road goes from six lanes to four, Kemp said. But the end is in sight.

“We are crawling to the finish line with this project,” he said.

A Union Pacific signal crew has already begun working on the site, installing equipment needed to operate the new crossing signals. More work is expected to be done next week that will require temporary lane closures.

A railroad crew that does surface work, such as replacing track, ties and concrete pans, is expected to arrive in June. The exact dates are not yet known, Kemp said.

Surface work at the crossing, including city crews patching the asphalt and restriping the road to a six-lane configuration, will require closure of all lanes. The work will be compressed as much as possible, with crews possibly working at night, Kemp said.

Scheduling railroad signal and surface crews is complicated because they are few in number and work across a large region, said Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis.

Weather delays and other issues on one project can throw off the timing of other projects down the line, he said.

Replacing the railroad crossing will cost the city $550,000, with 60 percent of the funding coming from a federal grant.